Homes across the the United States have gotten drunk on the high aesthetic that is Baby Nightsoil Home Décor. As the laws of interior design continue to be repealed by terrorists of good taste, more and more people are embracing non-traditional art, adding unique pieces such as Baby Nightsoil throwpillows to tie their home environments together. With the rising popularity of these bold accoutrements, no portion of the population is more thrilled than our friends in the animal kingdom.

In the photograph above, you’ll see a wild yet sharply dressed bear snuggling with a pillow that tells a love story that is open to interpretation. The bear and pillow are in Atlanta, Georgia. Bears have always complimented Baby Nightsoil art and the other way around. The shared worldview of fuzzy peace through loud roars unites them in life and in art.

Even more than bears, Baby Nightsoil has had a long connection to cats- perhaps rivaled only by the connection between Baby Nightsoil and the panda, which is essentially a cross between a cat and a bear. In the picture below, which comes to us from Brooklyn, New York, you’ll see two cats dance the magic dance over a pillow that celebrates centuries of dignified beauty among felines.

Several time zones to the left in Los Angeles, California, we find a cat warming up next to a pillow portrait of a cat who is a member of at least one Catwoman fan club.

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My recent campaign to get panda portraits of my wife on display at our favorite restaurants has added a second location. We visited Dua Vietnamese Noodle for lunch on my wife’s birthday. Her special birthday wish was to get two to-go orders of pho- one for lunch and one for a midnight snack- from Dua. We don’t frequent Dua as much as other pho spots because their hours aren’t particularly convenient and parking is annoying, but their noodles are so good that my wife looks for any opportunity to squeeze in a visit. We made the trip on her birthday and brought the restaurant a gift- a portrait I had done of her a few weeks earlier. The owners were very receptive and have asked me to do a few more pieces.

If you ever find yourself in Downtown Atlanta before 6pm and you’re hungry, I strongly recommend Dua. They have two locations on Broad Street: Dua and Dua 2 Go, which, as the name suggests, offers their regular menu to go. To all my fellow Dragon Con people, I recommend walking a little further down Peachtree Street to eat here during the Con. They’re closed on Sundays, so hit them up on Friday and Saturday. It’s just far enough from the major DC hotels that you won’t have to wait forever- definitely better food and experience than the spots in Peachtree Center!

Above you can see the inaugural restaurant panda portrait which I did for Scott’s Eats and Sweets in Mableton, Georgia, which is also a Vietnamese noodle spot. We’d eat at Scott’s more often too but Mableton is pretty far from where we live. It’s a nice to spot to meet up with some of our OTP (that’s outside-the-perimeter for you out-of-towners) friends.

I hope to get a few more restaurants in before the end of the year. If you’re interested in displaying a portrait of my wife as a panda eating the cuisine of your restaurant, send me an email (waynexiaolong@gmail.com) and we can try to put something together. I must warn you that in the interest of preserving my integrity as an artist- your food better be delicious or you get farts instead of arts.

I’ve been working on a lot of pieces that I’m not sure I want to share online because they’re pretty far out, but also because they’re part of a larger work in progress. In the meantime, here’s a little piece I did that is quite tame in comparison to the weirder stuff I’m currently working on. I’ve been privileged to visit a few natural history museums, aquariums, and the homes of pet owners recently, taking some great reference photos and really playing with this anthropomorphic trip I’ve been working with for the past couple of years. I know I haven’t posted much stuff in a while, but don’t worry- my imagination didn’t dry up.

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Series 4 stickers are available now. This series is special for a number of reasons.

1) It’s the biggest batch yet. If you want some, contact me at waynexiaolong-at-gmail.com. They’re not exactly for sale, but I’d love to trade them for help/collaboration on some of my projects (coloring, modeling, writing, etc.)

2) They sparkle in the sunshine, but don’t worry- it’s still 亲爱的 Dracula, not 亲爱的 Twilight.

3) No pandas….what?!? This batch honors some of my other favorite critters in the animal kingdom.

4) Several feature cat erotica. By fateful coincidence, I was visiting one of my favorite friends the same weekend I picked up these stickers. I had totally forgotten my friend was a cat erotica enthusiast! Maybe the next batch will have some sexy gentlemen in them…

5) Some are cut to look like creepy polaroids in a 1970s animal kingdom pornography basement.

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Here’s another lizard pic for all the lizard lovers out there in TV land. Unlike some of the recent animal pieces I’ve posted recently, this one veers away from the 1960s faded rainbow color harmony in favor of a more disturbing diseased flesh landscape- a blend of well-worn cowboy face with a mutated cowboy environment. I’ve had a fascination with a sort of necrotic Gaia setting, a corrupt global consciousness succumbing the weakness of the life that defines it, spiraling into a mass unified depression, rivers slitting their wrists while violins play the most minor keys that only the most suicidal of composers can conceive while the thumping collective heartbeat sinks to a mere single beat per minute. The chilling sense of infinity that comes from single point of reference, horizon-gazing, mirroring, rule of thirds, Kubrickin’, macro the micro/micro the macro, etc. and the like- I’m a sucker for all those motifs.

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As my friends have begun to have babies, I’ve found myself drawing them often as gifts. Through that process, I’ve been forced to spend chunks of time staring at the faces of babies. The whole experience is oddly soothing. I also frequently work from photographs I snap of people on the street- adults and teenagers- and the experience of staring at a grown person’s face, particularly when they’re not smiling, feels more like the business end of a psychic pitchfork. I’m on the fence on which make for creepier subjects- children or adults.

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I think both of these pieces came out pretty well, each creating a distinct scene. In the top one, I hear a soundtrack that crosses the soundtrack of Silence of the Lambs- that bit where the Buffalo peacocks- and Edward Elgar’s Pomp of Circumstance march, livening up the percussion crew Mickey Hart employed to score Apocalypse Now, perhaps with bass powerful enough to shake lava out of distance volcanoes despite being a distance fatally far from the ears of someone who might sympathize with your screams. It would be a party. Le génie de Mal, my dear friends. Or as the Lizard King, not a far cry from the Macho King, once said: “This place has everything. Pills, girls, grass. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

This one’s shooting more for a tranquility in passing, the half-smile from a stranger that feels like a Valium or when you hear a violin played underground- this music would be much softer, but no less intense- David Borden meeting up with Francisco Tarrega in a zen garden in the year 5000 where the lines between analog and digital, man and woman, life and death have been blurred so harmoniously that prayers and giggles set an unpredictable beat- so unpredictable anyone can follow along.

Yesterday I have the privilege of attending one of the Beehive Collective’s touring workshops for their gushingly beautiful and incredibly detailed work ¡Mesoamérica Resiste! which illustrates many of the issues at play in the Plan Pueblo Panama (P.P.P.) or Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project. The collective put all of their resources to work to craft the piece including numerous illustrators, scientists, and contributions from local people throughout the area affected by the PPP. Two women, Meg and Mandy, toured with the piece and gave thorough explanations of the many themes, metaphors, and assertions of the work. You can learn more about the Beehive Collective and their touring schedule by visiting their site and I strongly encourage that you do.